A ma de meng zhong qing ren

This is a film that shows a night and day in the life of one particular Taiwanese girl and her friends.

As some of commercial reviewers have noted, there is a wonderful immersion into the moments of the characters in this film, with each act seemingly shown in real time. I compare this aspect of it to things like Elephant (2003) or Bir zamanlar Anadolu'da (2011) (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia), both superior films that made this approach work.

That is why I am disappointed that this film wasn't actually any good. There's a worthwhile film here, if only they'd filmed it. It's actually an amateur work with governmental propaganda.

At the end of the film, reasonable audiences reasonably expect an ending. There is no end to this film. The shirouto amateur filmmakers simply ran out of ... what? script? cash? patience? ideas? ... and simply started the end credits. If this was Lord of the Rings, I'd know to expect the next third of the story in the sequel. But it's not.

The end is one of those moments in film when you realize the writer-director is telling audiences to f--- off, just to see who tolerates it. From the looks of it, quite a few did.

In conclusion, this is not a good one, it's just made by amateur with strong and unfair political parties' support.

My rating is 1 out of 10.

As another reviewer stated, I honestly don't know what the original reviewer was watching as it is totally not even close. But from that original reviewers only reviews all bad relating only to the sameTaiwanese director, I suspect there is some backstory to the hate vented. That said, because of the reviews I started watching this movie not knowing what to expect, but as the movie proceeded I genuinely got totally wrapped into it. The movie is a story told from a grandfather to his granddaughter on how the grandparents met and fell in love, and along the way teaching her a chunk of history of the Taiwanese movie scene. As the story unfolds we find that the grandmother is suffering from dementia and in a way is trapped back in that time, having now forgotten her husband and daughter. But it's through the grandfather's recalling of that magical time period to his granddaughter is where he might have unlocked the way to reconnecting with his wife. There are a few schmaltzy moments here and there, but in general many of the scenes played out well, and as I always sort of remember back to the 60s and 70s everything seemed simpler and even magical back then.

I don't know what the other reviewer was smoking, but this is a descent movie. As others have mentioned, it's the Taiwanese version of The Notebook. Funny and touching characters made for a pleasant viewing. They could take out the "etcchi" scenes a bit since it felt out of place. Otherwise, an enjoyable romantic comedy.